The third topic in this series of six posts about the bodhisattva practices known as the paramitas is kshanti or patience.

Overall, I think of kshanti as an aspect that balances the others. Generally one can see the first two paramitas – giving and ethics – as compassion in action, and the last two – meditation and wisdom – as equally expressions of wisdom. Balancing compassion and wisdom, the two broadest areas of Buddhist practice, are the two paramitas in the middle of the list – patience and effort. Effort, or virya, is our topic for next time. For now, I would like to say a few words about kshanti.

Kshanti is the practice of patience. You might say that it has two primary aspects. The first aspect is that of forbearance. This may be closest to its original meaning, when the teaching was developed, around the beginning of the Common Era. This means that when you practice kshanti, you cultivate the ability to endure hardships. You practice being present with even the most difficult things in your life, receiving them in a way that doesn’t reject them or turn away.

This way of practice brings to mind a teaching by Shantideva, the 8th Century Indian sage whose teaching was very encouraging. Shantideva taught, “If you can do something about it (your problem), why be discouraged? If you can’t do something about it, why be discouraged?” One can equally say, either way, why be impatient? Either way, you don’t turn away.

The second aspect of kshanti is allowing. That is to say, the patience you are practicing is specifically patience with what is. It is a practice of acknowledging what is, as it is, without judging whether it is good or bad. It is the practice of allowing what is to be what it is.

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And how is it? It is changing, always changing. Nothing remains in one state forever; nothing is permanent. In fact, each moment is a completely new state, the result of innumerable conditions that have arisen and dissolved.

Thus, many centuries after the teaching of kshanti was first expounded, Zen turned it, bringing forth another aspect. Putting the two sides of kshanti together – not turning away from what is, and seeing it as a new expression in each moment – Zen Masters understood that each moment is an opportunity. In deed, each moment is an opportunity to awaken to the true nature of things, to see how your life is teaching you about suffering and freedom from suffering. Each moment is an opportunity to awaken, if you are able to truly be present with what is. This is the opportunity of now.

Seeing it in that light, it’s easy to understand why sitting zazen is so important to Zen practice. For it is in sitting that you find the capacity to encounter your life. It is in zazen that you learn that you can face whatever is in this moment. It is in zazen that you find, again and again, that the opportunity of now is always available.

So I hope to encourage you to practice patience and, to do that, I will share a quote from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center. “If you become too serious, you will lose your way. If you are just playing a game, you will lose your way. So, little by little, with patience and endurance, we must find our way for ourselves.”

Finally I would add, moment by moment, we do find our way for ourselves. The question is, which way?

13th Century Zen Master Dogen taught that Buddhanature is the ground of all being, inherent in all people, places and things. He turned the ancient phrase, “All beings have Buddhanature” into the phrase, “All beings are Buddhanature.” This is quite a different way of experiencing life. Yet, I suspect that most of us don’t routinely experience life in that way. This is because we have a subtle misunderstanding about what or who we are.

Below is a link to a recent dharma talk I gave to the group “Access to Zen,” which meets in San Francisco. The talk addresses the question of a human life and some ways that we can open up to its meaning.

* Please note the correction to this talk. The phrase “The Way is perfect and all pervading” is the first line of Dogen’s Fukanzazengi, “A Universal Recommendation for Zazen,” not Genjokoan, “Absolute Questions of Everyday Life.”

One of the most misunderstood and misused teachings in Zen is that of “no gaining” mind. It is often quoted, typically without context, and suggested as an exhortation for a practice which takes “no goal” as its goal. This is a misunderstanding, quite far from the meaning of this phrase and the application it has to Buddhist practice.

In Japanese the term is 無所得 pronounced “mushotoku.” Taking each character separately; “mu” is a negation, “sho” means place, and “toku” means advantage, gain, profit. So the literal meaning is “the place where there is nothing to be gained” or nothing to which we can be attached. From there it is easy to understand that “no gaining” is a teaching of “no false discrimination,” or you might say abiding in the non-separation between subject and object. That is, “no gaining” mind refers to that mind which sees emptiness and interconnectedness as one.

For Zen Master Eihei Dogen this phrase appears in relation to egolessness, particularly in “Shobogenzo–Zuimonki,” a collection of pithy sayings by Dogen, as recorded by his disciple Koun Ejo in about 1234 CE. In this short compilation we hear Dogen’s constant exhortation to zazen, and to practice that fully engages body and mind without the expectation of gain. He says,

Simply do good without expectation of reward or recognition, be truly gainless, and work for the sake of benefiting others. The primary point to bear in mind is to drop your ego. To keep this mind you have to awaken to impermanence.

Thus, Dogen’s idea of the goal of practice is quite clearly described – awakening to impermance. This echoes the opening lines of the Heart Sutra in which it is said that Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion, was relieved of all suffering simply by “seeing” that body and mind are empty of permanent existence.

Sitting in zazen, experiencing our fundamental non-separation from all things, coming from the place where there is nothing to be gained, we also come to understand that there is nothing we lack. There is no need to look outside of ourselves for acknowledgement, no need to hope that our teacher will give us something special, no need to grasp at things that are always flying away. Instead, we can fully express, from within, harmony and the wish to benefit others, because they are none other than us.

Zazen (sometimes translated as seated meditation) usually takes place in silence in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition. Though a teacher might occasionally give a short Dharma talk during a period of sitting, it is much more usual to simply sit quietly. Guided meditation is very unusual in the tradition, in part because of Zen’s emphasis on a non-conceptual encounter with the world.

Still, one can never hear the instructions on how to sit zazen too often. In fact, the founder’s short description of the purpose and method of sitting, the Fukanzazengi, is chanted on a regular basis at most Soto Zen monasteries.

So, as part of a year-long program I am co-leading, I recently gave a 10 minute guided meditation. It leads the practitioner toward finding a relaxed, stable and alert posture, and then abiding in the thoughts and feelings of the present moment. Try it out. You might find that it’s refreshing to hear something you thought you already knew.

Racism is a Zen topic because it is about our mutual human inheritance, our struggle to live up to our personal, social and religious ideals, our ability or failure to acknowledge our common humanity and our connection with that which is greater than us. It has been in the US news of late in two particular instances – one in which a wealthy white man made some extreme comments about slavery and another in which a very wealthy white man made comments about associating with blacks and about the black men that played basketball on his team. In both these instances, those with authority have made clear decisions that express their strong disagreement with racist views. This is a day to celebrate, a day when those in power use their authority to issue appropriate consequences for those who would injure others through their deluded views of separation and arrogance.

San Francisco Airport mural

The sense of separation is one of the most fundamental delusions we hold as human beings. It is a mistake that might cause us to feel that we must put ourselves above others, or that we simply cannot care about others because we are too busy caring for ourselves. Simply writing this down makes it obvious how absurd it is. The fact is that we alone cannot completely take care of our own interests. We need other human beings to survive and they need us as well. So, while it is true that each person is a unique individual with a unique life, it is also true that every single person on the planet has the same DNA and that what we are is much, much greater than any one human being.

So it is up to each of us to turn this sense of separation around, and begin to study our own bodies and minds and the truth of our interaction with everything around us. Zazen, sitting meditation, is one way to simplify the amount of interaction to the point that we can begin to be present for it. Give it a try. You might find that your ideas are as fleeting as time and as changing as water. And that’s a good thing. Because racism can only exist when you hold on to a view of a very, very small world.

Though “zen” is a word that is used for many things, including MP3 players and beauty salons, the tradition of Zen is known for a variety of practices and arts. What can we learn from these practices that is applicable to life in the West?

Zazen

Zen is known to many for its meditation, a form of sitting that involves facing the wall. Although there are as many kinds of meditation as there are minds, zazen can be described as a form of meditation that is at once single-mindedly concentrated and open to a wide field of experience. That is, zazen is sitting that fully meets all aspects of our experience of the moment.

Shodo, Shakyo, and Sumi-e

Shodo is the art of Japanese calligraphy. Shakyo is the art of sutra copying. Sumi-e is the art of ink drawing. These arts, using a brush and black sumi ink, are forms of expression that require focus and years of practice to master.

Hoitsu Suzuki calligraphy courtesy of San Francisco Zen Center

In this age, when it’s possible to simply scan the most beautiful copy of an ancient text, upload it to your favorite copy center, and have 1000 copies made at 0.6 cents each, why would anyone want to write out a text by hand, much less using a brush? Or what is the value of painting yet another stalk of bamboo? Yet the beauty and uniqueness of each of these expressions is renowned.

Shojin Ryori

Shojin ryori literally translates as “devotion cooking” and means Zen temple cooking. It was the topic of a famous teaching by Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen. In the piece, entitled Instructions to the Cook, Dogen explains the way in which cooking is a practice on a par with meditation and the study of the Buddhist teachings. His audience of practitioners would have consisted mostly of men who likely viewed cooking as, at best, a daily necessity or, at worst, an undignified chore. Yet Dogen taught,

Take one stalk of vegetable to make the six-foot body [of buddha]; invite the six-foot body to make one stalk of vegetable. This is the divine power that causes transformations and the buddha work that benefits beings.

– translation by Taigen Dan Leighton

Garden at Ryoanji in Kyoto, Japan

Japanese gardens

Looking at a Japanese garden your first thought might be, “What kind of garden is this? It hardly has any plants.” The monastery in which I lived had moss gardens in its interior courtyards, a vegetable garden where we grew quite a bit of our food, and a flower garden on the street along the exterior wall. Much of the daily life of the residents involved tending the gardens. Imagine spending an hour weeding a patch of moss the size of one square meter. Kneeling on the coolness of it, with weeding fork in hand, a monk bends closer to look for the tiniest of grasses. Or a person sweeps the trail in the forest with a broom made of bamboo twigs, lifting the leaves into small piles, even as they continue falling from the trees.

Common Denominator

So what is it that can be distilled from this odd collection of practices? What do these arts have in common, and what can we learn from them?

Each of these traditional Zen arts is taking an everyday activity and turning it into a practice. It is taking the mundane activity of life, such as writing or weeding, and doing it in the service of wisdom. This turning toward wisdom takes place through the intention, the awareness, and the Mind that is applied, and it transforms the way we experience the activity. It’s not that it makes the activity into something magical. The cooking is still the cooking, chopping vegetables and boiling water. Yet the experience of cooking is met in an entirely different way, a way that connects to cooking as enlightened activity.

By Andy Serrano

This way of meeting our everyday life as enlightenment is the inheritance of the practice of the Zen ancestors. Start by understanding that every moment is a moment of enlightenment, ripe with the opportunity for realization. Because this is so, then sweeping must be enlightenment when it is fully engaged. This full engagement takes time, and it demands our full attention. That is why the Zen way is often the slow way. Doing even mundane things is the activity of a Buddha, and it is up to us to encounter how this can be so, whether you are sweeping in Kyoto or in Kansas.

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From “Unfathomable Depths” by Sekkei Harada Roshi as translated by Daigaku Rumme and Heiko Narrog

"If the perspective of self does not intervene, [practice] is not a matter of understanding or not understanding. Nor is it a matter of being satisfied or unsatisfied. So just try to let go of everything."